Historical Review: 1750–2000

Abstract

Today, compliance costs of businesses are part of the political agendas of many countries from the EU, the OECD and even developing and transition countries. This has not always been the case. It was good old Adam Smith who said in 1778 “Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible over and above what it brings to the public treasury of the state.”

From that time on, it took more than 200 years before a systematic monitoring of the development of only a part of the compliance costs, e.g. the compliance costs of information obligations started at the end of the 20th century. This chapter highlights the major phases between the first recognition by professionals until the establishment of monitoring systems. The more recent developments from 2000 onwards will not be illustrated in this but in the following chapters.

Pope, J. (1989) The Compliance Costs of Personal Income Taxation – a Review of the Lessons, Discussion Paper 89.03, Nedlands: Department of Economics, University of Western Australia, pp. 2–7Google Scholar